Thoughts from near and far

As the clock ticks to a halt, speculation, advice and clashing consent is spreading among the few who truly care and those guided by selfish motives.

Back when Pacifica really mattered, the current crisis at WBAI would be of concern to a large number of people and a spark igniting intensified support. What once raised money, now barely raises an eyebrow.

As one might have expected, this blog's viewership has increased, but comments are also popping up elsewhere, mostly from people with vested interest in the outcome. Here are some pertinent posts found elsewhere:

Tracy Rosenberg wrote:

I think there's already three loan offers. Subprime loans because the credit is bad, but 9-11% percent interest is a lot cheaper than the administrative costs of Chapter 11 bankruptcy, not to mention ESRT interest, so it's pretty economical by comparison. 

If you think the answer to Pacifica's troubles is a signal swap or signal sale (and I'm agnostic on that), then a loan buys the time to make that deal and you don't have to blow a million dollars of the proceeds in advance.

I think its wildly irresponsible to propose a chapter 11 bankruptcy without the money to pay for it or any draft reorganization plan that anyone has seen. 

There's much information out there that Chapter 11 is dumb if you don't have the means to pay all the admin costs in the bank. 

I've also heard future charitable donations are often not considered in a reorganization plan since they may or may not come through, and declaring bankruptcy tends to lower donations to a nonprofit. 

So if you can't use fund drives as your argument that you will have cash flow in the future and should be let out of bankruptcy, then the only way out is a very big sale or swap, probably one much more destructive than those you could look at if you stay out of bankruptcy (i.e. you'll need more than $5-10 million to prove solvency going forward and that means one of the total station evisceration swaps like the WPFW to AM one will be your only option to prevent a dissolution).  

And if you're in bankruptcy, your situation is public. Trump's FCC is very very partisan. If they can push you over the edge by waiting, that is a bit of fun Pai could probably enjoy. Heck, look what they are doing to CNN in the ATT/TW merger. You are the fake news they want to destroy :)

I have a feeling many of you aren't thinking too hard about this. 

Steve Brown wrote (reacting to Carol Spooner):

Wow, what could have prompted this weird post from Carol Spooner re Pacifica’s options.

Carol wrote: 5) The idea of buying time by getting a loan to solve our problems keeps coming back like a bad penny -- Pacifica's bad credit means that it cannot get any loan on terms that it can afford to pay back.  It cannot get long-term loans at reasonable interest, and it may not even be able to get short term loans at high interest.  They have been trying.  They even engaged the services of an "expert" in obtaining financing for non-commercial broadcasters.  No luck so far.  And time is running out, see #1 above.

This is simply not so, and I can’t understand why Carol would write it, since she has factual information to the contrary..

Contrary to Carol’s bizarre assertion, Pacifica already has a letter of intent from a lender for a $2 million dollar loan, per Grace Aaron, at an interest rate that is exactly the same as the interest Pacifica  would have to pay its creditor even if it went into bankruptcy. So it is a wash as far as interest is concerned.. But the bankruptcy option is even worse than a wash. For if Pacifica chooses the loan scenario, it not only avoids bankruptcy (which would increase Pacifica’s debt by as much as $1 million in legal fees, and force it to pay off, not just the $1.8 million judgment, but all of its $8 million in debt immediately, instead of being able to pay it off years later, under the loan scenario) – it would also free Pacifica from the threat of having its bank accounts emptied and its operations terminated when the ESRT swooped in (which could happen any moment) to exercise its judgment. 

The loan option – as opposed to the “nuclear” bankruptcy option -- would allow Pacifica some breathing space to regroup, reorganize, and revitalize its operations. The purpose if a bankruptcy court is to make creditors whole as fast as possible. This would mandate selling Pacifica’s real estate and/or one or more of its stations. Does anyone not really how seriously the sale of a station would  cripple the network? It would be like telling an Olympic sprinter – “Hey, don’t sweat losing one of your legs. You still have another one, and maybe one day they’ll institute a one-legged Olympic event. If you do, you’ll be the first one they’ll call. Meanwhile, be happy in your retirement home sipping warm tea.”

Be real. Bankruptcy is shooting craps with an irreplaceable radio network, the last remaining independent radio network in America, capable of reaching more than half the population of the entire company. But some don’t care about losing a station or two, and eviscerating Pacifica’s potential for changing the public conversation about critical issues. They care only about cannibalizing the rest of the network to obtain a big cash payout to use for maintaining their own local station. 

It appears that Executive Director Bill Crosier ( a wonderful fellow) has lost his way, and has swallowed a Burger-King-sized giant gulp of bankruptcy angel dust fed to him by in-house financial advisers who have no personal experience with bankruptcy, nor a commitment to the Pacifica mission.

Indigopirate wrote:

Perhaps the simplest – and the most fundamental – question of all:

The various plans schemes hopes feverdreams and nightmares to date all hope or pretend to hope to address the debt crisis.

Yet... doing so, even for the short-term future, requires cooperation, coordination, competence, and foresight never – never – yet evidenced in Pacifica at the management or board levels.

Yet... surviving the debt crisis, which is in fact simply the manifestation of a long long infinitely-longstanding chronic crisis of programming and of programming management would require Pacifica to fundamentally – fundamentally – reorganize, restructure, and – most importantly – redefine itself.

Does anyone – anyone – believe that's possible, given who and what Pacifica *is*?

Echoing a common sentiment that people seem afraid to express,  Francis Bonnano wrote:

The news I read this morning on Google re WBAI was total bullshit.

Explanations, they make stuff up as they go. 

IMO, the real reason BAI is so fucked up right now is because its programming is IRRELEVANT !!!!! 

For the past two years, we've been constantly lectured about afrocentric issues.  All day, all night, virtually every day.

Who the hell needs that? Who is going to shell out $50 or more to subscribe? 

That's why they needed to bring in Gary Null et al so sell shit to us, like one of those late-night TV jewelry scams.

It's embarrassing and pathetic.

We didn't do any of this shit back in the 1960s, 70s and even the 80s. 

Everyone sent in some money and that was enough to sustain the station.